Since I work about 1/2 mile from Navega's HQ here in Tegus, and since I know their sales manager I can say a few things about Navega.
- They are a solid company.
- In the same group as Celtel (Tigo)
- They are aggressive and have bandwith to back their words
- In our last network renewal contract they came close to winning it over our long standing-network provider (they renoved about $50,000 of installation costs from their offer). Only thru more agressive pricing from Americatel did they not get it. Again, they have a lot of capacity.
Angel
----- Original Message -----
From: Chas Watkins
To: travel-to-honduras.....com
Sent: Friday, January 19, 2007 12:15 PM
Subject: [travel-to-honduras] Navega Internet more details
Summary
Navega
Can and have sold as little as 64K to end users on the island.
They currently do not have a residential "package", as they were not
prepared for TTI's demise However they are meeting on Monday to come
up with a strategy.
Installation costs $500USD.
They require a year contract.
The cost for "concentrated" 64K (think 128K plus) is about $170 a month.
They have limited "radios" for connection at the moment they will have
enough for everyone who needs one in 3 weeks.
They may be proposing to use a secondary network like TTI and
GlobalNets for residential. However they will not be using the
equipment you have unless you can prove you own it.
Navega will be supplying Utila as well in three weeks.
For Sales contact Mario Alvarenga 995 7377 malvarenga.....hn
unfortunately he does not speak much English.
First I put the summary of the following first so you can skip the
rest if you want.
Secondly I have ABSOLUTLY NO financial affiliation with any internet
provider on the island and NEVER intended to have any. May only
concern is trying to get the facts clear on the services available to
everyone. In my mind competition is the only way to push quality up
while reducing the prices.
Mitch is unfortunately not up to date with what Navega is doing on the
island which is not really surprising since he is in essence a
competitor. They are probably not telling him everything.
I sat down with three of their representatives yesterday and will be
chatting with their General Manager over the next few days.
So here is clarification of the current situation with Navega. As
always the caveat is some of this is what I have been told by them
sometimes I can I verify the facts, sometimes not. I will try and
point out the difference.
First what is Navega?
Navega has traditionally supplied Internet to commercial organizations
and other internet suppliers. This is a very different type of
internet supplier than we are used to on Roatan. It is important that
you understand the difference. Navega supplied TTI among others with
their bandwidth. TTI then shared that bandwidth among its users. They
guarantee the connection rate and uptime as part of their contracts.
They have the best network in Honduras with two fibre optic
connections to the rest of the world.
To understand the difference I will make a silly analogy. Navega
supplies apple concentrate to businesses, TTI (and GlobalNet) dilute
that concentrate by splitting it up and selling it to end users.
Another way of looking at is that for every chunk of bandwidth TTI
bought from Navega they shared it out to about 8 residential
providers. They could do this because not everyone uses the internet
at the same time and statistically they can predict how many people
their network can support. Some times there are too many people on
line and the internet does not work as well but most of the time TTI
worked well.
This is the same reason that GlobalNet has sucked for the last year. I
was a user of GlobalNet because I could not get TTI at my last
residence. So I speak from experience. They did not have enough
bandwidth off island for their customer base I have covered this at
great length in my previous article. Now its great if they are getting
more bandwidth off island they certainly needed it before. I hope that
they are switching on enough bandwidth not just to bring their network
up to where it should have been before but enough to cope with all
their new clients. I will believe it when I see it since they were not
that client orientated before. I am not willing to take anything on
Roatan on faith. "Show me the bandwith!" to misquote Jerry meguire
So back to Navega they supply "concentrated" internet. That's why
their contracts guarantee uptime and that you actually receive the
bandwidth that you pay for! Remember TTI (did) and GlobalNet share
that internet to their end users. So they could never guarantee it.
Navega has already supplied 64K connections to people on the island
and they are working well! So forget whatever else you are told.
A 64K connection should be thought of as better than a 128K connection
with TTI. I have spoken to the TTI technicians most of whom work for
Navega now and they confirm this is true and they are amazed at how
good the connection is from here.
Also Navega is using WiMax technology to connect to its clients that
does not need line of site and can connect over longer distances than
the standard 2.4 Ghz technology that TTI and GlobalNet use.
Lastly Navega is using the CelTel towers to place their equipment. I
believe they belong to the same consortium. So when power goes out the
internet will still work, as long as you have a generator for your
equipment, just like the cell phones do at the moment as the towers
have their own generators.
So my opinion is a that a 64k connection as supplied today is as good
(or better) than a 128K connection sold by TTI before they were "removed"
I will try and get more information to everyone as soon as I can.
Regards
Chas Watkins
PS I will try and update my internet page ASAP
http://www.lifeonroatan.com/index.php?p=view_article&id_article=30
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